Limbo no longer in limbo

Limbo -- the place created by Catholic theology, not the dance pictured here -- never made sense to me. How could there be eternal happiness apart from God? The non-literal understanding of hell is that it is a spiritual place made miserable by one's separation from God. But in the Catholic Church, where baptism is believed essential for entry into heaven, Christians struggled to understand what happened to babies who died before they were baptized. So Catholics created a place called limbo.

Shortly after Pope John Paul II died and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became pope, the Church began reconsidering limbo. On Friday, Benedict reversed the centuries-old teaching. From the AP:

Theologians said the move was highly significant -- both for what it says about Benedict's willingness to buck a long-standing tenet of Catholic belief and for what it means theologically about the Church's views on heaven, hell and original sin -- the sin that the faithful believe all children are born with.

Although Catholics have long believed that children who die without being baptized are with original sin and thus excluded from heaven, the Church has no formal doctrine on the matter. Theologians, however, have long taught that such children enjoy an eternal state of perfect natural happiness, a state commonly called limbo, but without being in communion with God.

''If there's no limbo and we're not going to revert to St. Augustine's teaching that unbaptized infants go to hell, we're left with only one option, namely, that everyone is born in the state of grace,'' said the Rev. Richard McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. ''Baptism does not exist to wipe away the ''stain'' of original sin, but to initiate one into the Church."